In life comes love and with love comes pain. In high school, we are naïve to the very idea of love even with conversations from parents and siblings, but then comes college. In college, we have the past experiences of love and relationships and convince ourselves that we have grown from high school. Have we really? We fall in love and we convince ourselves that this person is the person of our dreams who shows maturity, passion, intelligence, charm, and more, but then comes reality that no one is perfect, and dreams are just dreams.

Heartache, shame, hate, betrayal is just the few words of our pain and the big question—WHY? Why did he/her cheat, lie, and/or breakup with me? Every day we put ourselves out into the world and find these amazing people who shower us with love, praise, and gifts, but then comes the fact that it’s over. Getting over a college breakup starts with getting in control of your life.

PHOTO CREDIT: JACOBS, ETHAN. 2016.

Being the bigger person and taking charge instead of wallowing in shame, tears, and anger is the first step towards a college breakup. Leave that room, get dressed, and take control of everything. It will be hard. The idea that a breakup is easy is laughable, so just take every awkward situation and every moment that reminds you of him/her and work through it.

Finding solace in friends, academics, family, a passion (writing, dancing, singing, acting, etc.) or yourself is the next step towards a college breakup. It has been said that keeping busy is a proven way to get over a breakup. You are making something of yourself and making great/beautiful music, art, poetry and more. And with something great that you are doing, it goes a long way and so do you. Maybe you’re not really facing the issue of your breakup at hand, but you are slowly working towards it.

Finding a way to exist when you both are in the same college, have the same friends, both in the same club(s), and have the same classes
is another way to deal with a college breakup. Let’s be honest, every day you will see him/her, and it will be hard and awkward, especially when they start dating another person, but you have to find a way to exist or at least be friends, in a way, in order to get through college life. You can’t quit a club, stop being friends with his/her friends, or avoid any kind of contact because they are there, and they are not leaving. Make the effort and break the ice, don’t make things hard because it gets harder for you.

Take a new look on life and be the change of tomorrow. Finally, everything comes together and after a long, hard time of a college break- up, comes closure. You have finally taken control of your life, made something worth- while with your breakup, and made peace with your ex-boyfriend/girlfriend and now comes a new look on life for you. I am not talking about changing your physical image, but finding a new look on life—seeing the good in men/women and not the bad, laughing, being more open and honest with who you are and what you look for in a relationship, finding common knowledge with the breakup being a good thing and not just a bad thing, being more involved with college life, and being an inspiration/role model to people who experience breakups.

In a relationship comes the highs and lows of life with the good and bad. Sometimes it takes a breakup or more for someone to find the one.

We are all perfect in our own way and if we lose someone because they don’t value, respect, or even love the person we are then that’s okay. Before we were his/her girlfriend and/or boyfriend, we were us. We were the young men and women with her own ambitions and own dreams and we can’t lose the person we were.

Relationships are not terminated because we choose to stay in bad relationships because we have convinced ourselves that being disrespected, ignored, and treated less than what we are is better than being alone. But we shouldn’t fear being alone, there is power in rediscovering our own voice, and sometimes we forget that. No one has the power to shatter your dreams unless you give it to them, so when it comes to dealing with a college breakup then I suggest that we accept it as it is because we are strong, beautiful/ handsome, intelligent and worth so much more.

Ask yourself these two questions and see if you can come up with an answer: Why did the relationships end? Was ending the relationship for the best? If anyone has an answer then great, and if not, then that’s okay because we are amazing, worth so much more, and we will nd love